I just went through Mike's excellent Slider Tutorial (http://www.3dluvr.com/blackbourn/web/tuts/stut/stut.html) and now I want to use sliders for everything. :) --- I think they would especially be great for expressions... though I haven't messed with it much. -- Have any of you found some creative uses for the new Sliders in LW7.5 ?

red_oddity

08-01-2002, 03:34 PM

Hell yeh,

How about your camera properties (focal distance, focal stop, top that of with the really cool depth-of-field object (which IMHO should be part of the camera itself, instead of a custom object))
Or changing colors (just make some RGB envelopes and voila)
Or a group of lights in order to dim groups of spotlights (came in handy on the last job (Audi car stand (1200 square meters of show room))

Lots of goodies (though NewTek does need to fix a couple of things, the naming of sliders bug me (too long), no keyframe delete, and the fact that it shows up in every friggin viewport is reaeaeaeally annoying...but i can live with it)

NanoGator

10-06-2003, 10:59 PM

Right now I'm using sliders to create multipass renderings. Wish I had noticed a long time ago that surfaces were envelopable.

SplineGod

10-07-2003, 06:29 AM

Not to mention that with sliders you can make settings scene based rather then object based. This is good when working on big productions where somebody might save an object after changing its surface settings back over the original version. :)

CIM

10-07-2003, 06:37 AM

I never use them, because they're clunky and barely work. :annoyed:

Newtek should scrap them (or fix them) and implement virtual sliders, like in Maya.

NanoGator

10-07-2003, 06:41 AM

That's funny, they work fine for me. No clunks here.

Facial Deluxe

10-07-2003, 06:44 AM

Well, I haven't use sliders yet. I've seen rigs of other user using them for hand etc, but wasn't keen on that method.

Nanogator, how are you using them for multipass ? Is it hidding unwanted objects with sliders ?

SplineGod, I don't get your point, could you explain a bit more ?

SplineGod

10-07-2003, 07:27 AM

When you model characters and surface them its impossible to test them under all possible lighting conditions. Sometimes you have to tweak the surface settings on a character to make it work under different lighting conditions. If you resave the character it screws up any other shots that will be rendered.
Typically you would have to save a variant of the base character for that shot.
Making the surface settings scene based makes it easier to avoid that. When you attach the surface attributes to sliders the settings are not saved with the object but with the scene and the base object remains unchanged. :)

Facial Deluxe

10-07-2003, 07:33 AM

Got it :thumbsup: thanx Larry :wip:

scroll-lock

10-07-2003, 07:33 AM

i have used sliders in Lightwave and Max... they are buggy in both programs :annoyed:

NanoGator

10-07-2003, 08:34 AM

Originally posted by Facial Deluxe
Nanogator, how are you using them for multipass ? Is it hidding unwanted objects with sliders ?

Well sort of. A while back, I was reading through a book on the making of Deep Space Nine. They talked about how they mounted the model on a stand and shot a bunch of different photos of the station, one for each element, and then they composited them together.

Just for fun, I recreated it in CG.

http://www.nanogator.com/multipass-ds9.jpg

Though this process was easy, there's a little bit of overhead that was a challenge. First, I had to make several different versions of the mesh. I had to do one that was just windows, another that was just the 'dingus', and another that didn't have any lights on, and so on. So not only did I have a bunch of meshes, but I had a bunch of scene files too. Animating was a bit of a hassle. I had to do the animation, then manually create the scenes while maintaining the motion data. Fixing one change was problematic. Nothing that a good
preparation phase wouldn't prevent, but hey, s't happens!

Well I ran into some trouble this week. I'm working on a project at work. My mesh is in a renderable state, but I'm constantly adding new stuff to it. So I find myself over and over and over again tweaking surfaces. So, I finally got fed up and figured out how to tie the attributes of the mesh I needed to sliders. So now I've got a slider that controls the object's specularity, its diffuse, its reflectivity, its glossiness, etc. So when I go to render a specific pass, I just turn off the elements I don't want, and keep the ones I do. I even found a way to do it in a sequence so I didn't have to keep re-tooling with the sliders.

Sorry, this is a bit long, but I hope it kind of makes sense now. In the DS9 example, I'd have a slider controlling the Window lights, one for the Dingus, one for the 'malibu lights', one for the specularity, and one for the diffuse. I typically use a 3-point lighting setup, so I'd have one slider for each group of lights that represent a point.

Cool, eh?

Facial Deluxe

10-07-2003, 08:37 AM

Very cool :buttrock:

NanoGator

10-07-2003, 09:39 AM

*Edit: Oops, just realized I might be hijacking the thread. So I created a new one.

Originally posted by scroll_lock
i have used sliders in Lightwave and Max... they are buggy in both programs :annoyed:

Okay, maybe I'm misunderstanding you and CIM, can you define buggy? Examples?

I ask because I've been using them all day and have had no bugginess to report. Now I'm paranoid I'm going to trip over something down the road hehe.

CGBeard

10-07-2003, 10:50 AM

I've had problems with sliders ever since I upgraded to 7.5b and I've still have problems with 7.5c. I can set them up and they'll work fine but then they start freezing up and dropping channels. I always end up deleting the slider.

Andy

scroll-lock

10-07-2003, 01:20 PM

In LW i have just the same problems like CGBeard, in Max if you have some properties for the object that has values from 0 to 100 with the sliders you can adjust them from -10000 to +10000 if you want... and i think that`s not right . /i know that you can set the values range first, but if you don`t do it you will see how buggy it is/

Locutus

10-07-2003, 02:04 PM

Any tutorials on using sliders for opening and closing the fingers on a hand?
I've never really learned to fully use sliders and I think that would be a good start for me.

SplineGod

10-07-2003, 07:24 PM

The only issue I have with using sliders for fingers is that you have no easy way of being able to also just grab the finger bones and tweak them. Once the bones are tied to expressions thats it. You only get a limted range of motions that way and then you have to also set up extra sliders/expressions to control each finger individually. It takes a long time and its not particularly worth it IMO. I much prefer selection sets because they can be created easily and quickly plus you have the ability to still tweak individual bones. You can also create them on the fly.

tburbage3

10-07-2003, 10:20 PM

Larry,

Your point regarding sliders/surface parameter controls saved in the scene file is a very good tip. So then Load From Scene would be the way to use that object as opposed to loading the object directly. I guess the character animators out there would do that in any case, but I hadn't thought of it with regard to enhanced surface control.

Do you guys have a standard rule you use in setting up your main surface channel (i.e. diffuse, specular, etc.) percentages and compositing modes for the textures (add/subtract/multiply/divide as opposed to "normal") to allow for the most control?

-Tom B

JohnD

10-07-2003, 11:01 PM

Facial expressions and fingers used mostly here, but really can be used for just about anything.

SplineGod

10-07-2003, 11:23 PM

Hey Tom, another place this is handy is when a character is in shadow and looks good but then has to walk out in bright sunlight and spec is way blown out. You can use the slider to easily animate the spec value down to a lower setting when the character walks into the brighter light.

Locutus

10-08-2003, 05:42 AM

Originally posted by SplineGod
The only issue I have with using sliders for fingers is that you have no easy way of being able to also just grab the finger bones and tweak them. Once the bones are tied to expressions thats it. You only get a limted range of motions that way and then you have to also set up extra sliders/expressions to control each finger individually. It takes a long time and its not particularly worth it IMO. I much prefer selection sets because they can be created easily and quickly plus you have the ability to still tweak individual bones. You can also create them on the fly.
I tried using selections sets and it is a better choice, thanks.
As always you're a big help.

KillMe

10-08-2003, 05:52 AM

what annoys me about sliders is that you need to have the sliders button activated to use them

why cant lw jsut detect when you move you mouse over them and do it automatically

this would remove the clunkiness cim refered too i believe

NanoGator

10-08-2003, 06:09 AM

I have mixed feelings about that. Seems like the problem would exist either way.

Though if they are really that troublesome, might I suggest Sliderbox? It puts them in a seperate window...

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